


It's The Thought That Counts(?)

by Officer_Jennie



Series: Tumblr Drabbles [45]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-25
Updated: 2019-05-25
Packaged: 2020-03-14 16:44:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18952009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Officer_Jennie/pseuds/Officer_Jennie
Summary: Tobirama and Madara are both idiots whenever it comes to people. At least Tobirama's a bit better at figuring them out(?)





	It's The Thought That Counts(?)

After several years and many near amicable moments between them, Tobirama had assumed their relationship wouldn’t regress to the hostility he’d felt from Madara during the war - or even what it had been at the founding of Konoha. Though, to be fair, this behavior seemed more childish than aggressive. He staved off the coming migraine by pinching the bridge of his nose, several scrolls tucked up under one arm as he made his way through the halls to his office.

That Madara had picked up such a domestic hobby as baking had been a little surprising. That he had insisted on bringing in pastries and pies to seeming the whole tower had caused many heads to turn, Tobirama’s included. But it was hardly the hobby itself that caused Tobirama’s eyes to roll - and the corners of his mouth to twitch downward whenever he was alone.

He’d never had much of a sweet tooth anyway. The fact that Madara had thrown a near fit whenever Hashirama had tried to share some of last week’s blueberry pie with him shouldn’t cause the dour mood threatening to bring his morning down already.

If the trend continued as it had the past several weeks, everyone in the offices would be getting some sort of baked good for breakfast. He dropped his scrolls down a little harder than necessary onto his desk, not bothering to straighten them up as he normally would. By the end of the hour the whole tower would smell like a bakery, and at this point he was willing to spend his only off day during the weekend on slapping together some sort of seal to keep the smell out of his own office.

It would be another hour or so before he’d have to deal with that, at least. What Hashirama always called his ‘inhuman’ habit of getting up well before the sun every morning worked in his favor there, the tower around him peacefully quiet, almost the whole village asleep and calm around him. There was just something so soothing about feeling so many chakra signatures at rest, no violent or angry spikes to disrupt his focus, and Tobirama settled into his desk chair to make use of the peace while he could.

Which ended up being little more than ten minutes.

He ground his teeth in frustration at the approaching signature, Madara’s chakra already rubbing him the wrong way and setting him on edge. It didn’t help that something seemed to be stirring in it, some sort of emotion that he couldn’t name - he could never really name them, only the general feel of whatever it was setting people off, and whatever bee bothering Madara that morning felt sharp and jittery.

Even knowing that he wouldn’t have to deal with the man himself didn’t improve Tobirama’s mood. Just the jagged feel of his chakra would keep him on edge, and his already sour mood was just getting more and more dour the closer Madara got to the tower.

To his horror, the man didn’t stop at his own office. Whatever his destination was, more than likely the hokage’s empty office, it was bringing him suffocatingly close to Tobirama’s. He didn’t even bother trying to get to work yet, sitting at his desk and shaking one foot under his chair, waiting for a bit of distance to allow his mind to calm enough to focus.

He nearly dropped his head to the desk whenever Madara pounded on his door, shooting a single and forlorn glance towards his window and wondering if it would be worth escaping. If he hadn’t put those damned seals up all over the tower, he’d be able to simply hiraishin home and avoid the damned man for a while longer - he lamented his own habit of over securing every building he could as he bid the man to enter, firmly keeping his gaze down at an unrolled scroll just to appear as busy as possible.

“Are you seriously working this early in the morning?”

It took physical effort not to grind his teeth, tapping his fingers on his desk instead. The smell of some sort of baked good was already wafting in along with the Uchiha, further irritating him and making his response a bit snippier than normal. “What else would I be doing in my office? Baking a cake?”

“You bake?”

His brows pinched together at that, eyes flickering over to see a rather surprised Madara staring down at him from across his desk. “Wha- no, I don’t bake. That was just…” He shook his head, a stray thought calling to attention that Madara had pulled his hair back for the day. Odd, though entirely unimportant, no matter how put together it made him look. He leaned back in his chair, most of the irritation leaving his tone just out of sheer habit. “What do you want, Madara?”

“You know what today is.” Madara crossed his arms rather forcefully over his own chest, looking as if it angered him greatly to spit that statement out. When all Tobirama did was blink at him, entirely unsure of what he meant, Madara snapped his head to the side to glare out the window. “Don’t make me say it, Senju! It’s! Today!”

“Most every time that statement is made, it is the truth, yes.”

That apparently wasn’t the right thing to say. A moment later, Madara’s hands were slammed down on the desk, and only the fact that nothing was knocked over saved them from being stabbed with one of the many weapons Tobirama had stashed in his desk. He still didn’t appreciate the aggression even in the slightest, staring Madara down even as the man snarled at him.

“Stop being so fucking difficult, you know  _exactly_  what I’m talking about! It’s today, and I have to do  _something_ , so  _here I fucking am_!” Without letting Tobirama so much as snap a single word back, Madara dropped something heavy on his desk - though where in the hell the Uchiha had been hiding a whole parcel had Tobirama blinking in confusion for a few seconds, perplexed by both the appearance of it and by what was now sitting on his desk.

It looked to be a pie of sorts. Tobirama dared to lift the lid up just a touch with a finger, the bakery smell filling his office even more to the point where he could actually pin point that it was, in fact, a blueberry pie.

The fact that blueberry pies were his favorite had to be a coincidence. It wasn’t information Madara would have. Still, he’d been raised proper, and he was hardly going to be impolite whenever presented with a gift - no matter how out of the blue and perplexing the whole situation was.

“Aaahhh, thank you?” Probably shouldn’t have been a question. Madara just huffed at it anyway, his cheeks pink from his angry outburst no doubt, him fidgeting uncomfortably in the silence that enveloped the room about them.

When Madara finally moved to speak or leave or  _something_  other than standing there, Tobirama had to send quiet thanks to whatever gods were watching over him, because he wasn’t sure how much longer he could just sit there with the Uchiha making his morning drag on into infinity.

“Don’t eat it all in one sitting. You’ll get fat.” After that shaming statement, Madara turned and walked rather stiffly towards the door, stopping with his hand on the handle to throw one last curve ball over his shoulder before he left, “And happy birthday, or whatever.”

When the door shut rather loudly behind him, all Tobirama could do was stare at it for a few minutes, his mind going back to the well wishes and drawing a blank at them. Once he managed to shake himself at least slightly out of his stupor he had to throw a confused look out the window, just to make sure he wasn’t imagining things and that it was indeed mid-summer.

He’d never received any sort of birthday gift so late before. Though how Madara had gotten the date so widely off - and why he’d even bothered to not only get him something, but  _make_  him something, had Tobirama rather distracted for the rest of the work day.

It wasn’t until rather late that evening, flickering candles his only source of light as he enjoyed a small piece of the pie, cozied into his usual corner on the sofa with a collection of old poems he’d gotten from his brother a few years before - that it finally dawned on him what Madara had been doing for the past several weeks.

Laughing was easier than pondering any sort of implications. Implications including why he thought the idea of Madara spending weeks trying to bake a pie for what he assumed was Tobirama’s birthday was so… _warm_ , in a way. So Tobirama just laughed, waving Mito off when she came in to see what had him in such a fit, not yet ready to share his discovery with anyone.

Apparently, Madara wasn’t all bite after all. He took another bite of the surprisingly decent pie, his nose wrinkling with humor as he tried and failed to get drawn back into his poems. Who would have thought the Uchiha had a soft spot under all those spikes and fire?


End file.
